Kangaroo Rissoles

The Australian beef rissole was one of my favourites as a child. But they are generally made using flour and/or bread crumbs, which is not so good if you are trying to avoid grass seeds and the associated anti-nutrients. My take on the humble rissole skips the bread crumbs, and uses kangaroo mince just to make them extra Aussie!

YUM!

Kangaroo meat is high in Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA), which may have anti-carcinogenic and anti-diabetes properties, in addition to reducing obesity and atherosclerosis. Wikipedia is a good place to start if you want to do more research on CLA. However, before you go reaching for that CLA supplement, read this post on Mark's Daily Apple about CLA supplementation. I think I'll stick to eating game and grass fed and finished farmed meat thank you very much.

Anyway, research aside, eat Kangaroo. It is definitely grass fed and finished and tastes awesome. The mince can be a little pungent before it is cooked, but then again I think the same about pork (completely different smell though). If you really can't stand the thought of eating skippy then try substituting with lamb mince; also high in CLA.

Ingredients

• 1kg of kangaroo mince
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tomato, finely chopped (capsicum also works well)
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 small (approximately 200g) sweet potato, boiled and mashed
• 1 tsp mixed herbs
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Ghee, coconut oil or any other stable saturated fats that won't break down with heat

Method

1. Preheat the oven to LOW (150 degrees Celsius or under).
2. Place all the ingredients (excluding the ghee) into a large mixing bowl.



Mixing



Mixed

3. Now, this is messy! Get your hands into the bowl and mix all the ingredients together.
4. Heat a frying pan to medium-high, and melt some ghee or coconut oil in the pan.
5. Make round rissoles out of the mince mixture and place in the pan. Don't overcrowd the rissoles, as too many rissoles in the pan will make them difficult to flip.



Make the rissoles smaller than the palm of your hand

6. I cook the rissoles for 20-30 seconds on each side, and then flip, for a total of about 5 minutes (depending on how large you make the rissoles). If you don't continuously flip the rissoles they end up very dry. I picked up this tip while watching Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection.
7. Once the rissoles are cooked, place them on a tray and pop them in the oven. This is only to keep them warm while you do the next batch. Ideally you would cook them all at the same time in a large pan or on the BBQ, however this may not be possible.
8. Scrape the pan clean, melt some more ghee in the pan and cook the next batch.
9. Serve with a huge plate of vegetables!

Just a few words of advice. You don't have gluten in your rissoles to glue them together (remember making paper mache glue out of flour and water as a child?), so make sure you chop everything up as fine as possible. Also, don't go adding extra wet ingredients like grated carrot or zucchini. This will only make your rissoles fall apart while you are cooking them.

Kangaroo meat rissoles tend to be relatively dry (even when you flip them every 20 to 30 seconds) as the meat is quite lean. My wife likes her rissoles dry so I deal with it; untold trials! However, if you have a few more degrees of freedom (or you wear the pants) add a little bit of fatty lamb or pork mince.

Enjoy!